The Unprovable
So, tell me, is it truth or a trick?
The first time I led a debate in high school, the teacher told me I should consider going into law. The topic was unmemorable, maybe I didn’t care much about it, but I do remember the buzzing satisfaction of a win, of understanding that if I was thrown off my axis by an opponent, I could think on my feet, find the words, and persist.
I’ll admit, this became somewhat of a point of pride. I enjoyed entertaining conversations with people diametrically opposed to me. Occasionally, I sought those people out with intention to see how I might counter them—politically, philosophically, ideologically. I could pathologize this nagging need, interrogate my ego, but the simple truth is, people like to be right, and they like to win.
Learning the skill for debate and the skill for empathetic communication in the face of division or dissension also meant learning to be wrong. I’ve been wrong countless times. If you can accept that humanity means working with the limitations of your knowledge, perspective, and experience, and you’re allowed to change your mind as those things shift, then being wrong can carry as satisfying a weight as being right.
While you may always desire one specific outcome, it’s the voyage to the end that feeds us and our understanding.
I was often fed by these interactions.
But in 2020, there was a distinct shift in my ability to engage them.
I received a message from someone I knew, a living breathing human who’d been in my life for many years. At first, I thought it was a sort of strange copy and paste message, but I quickly realized it was real. It was a message truly written by this person, truly meant for me.
They talked about the danger of COVID lockdowns and what it would do to children as they moved their existences online (a reasonable concern, worthy of meaningful and nuanced conversation). The message quickly descended. If children move online, there will be less restrictions on their interactions, and if there are less restrictions then there will be more access. And if you create access to them, that landscape will become ripe for predators, and those predators will influence impressionable children to make dangerous decisions (again, a conversation worth having). And if we allow that, our children will be groomed to become gay (oh, no, ya lost me).
I blinked at the message. This person was very serious. They were very concerned, and they wanted to know what I thought.
In a few messages exchanged back and forth, I was made aware of the supposed scheme the LGBTQ+ community had been executing for decades to recruit and groom children.
I was confused. I didn’t know this person to be illogical, or even really politically engaged, but their message seemed borderline frantic, and though I was baffled by the clear bigotry, I was somehow sympathetic. We’d all been stuck inside for months, our world was functioning completely differently, and the news cycle was endlessly churning out information that was challenging to digest. If they’d seen something concerning, I wanted to know.
So, I asked for their sources.
It was hard to maintain goodwill as I clicked through tweets, Reddit, and Facebook monologues. There was nothing verifiable in what I was reading, nothing substantive to chew on, nothing that rang reasonable or true.
So, I said as much and was met with arguments I’d become very familiar with.
“If you can’t see it, you’re part of it, or you’re willfully blind.”
“That’s the whole point. They’re not going to show you the evidence—it’s hidden.”
“Open your eyes. You’re being fooled. Follow the money, look at the patterns.”
I couldn’t disprove it, because my inability to see it meant that the conspiracy at the centre of their belief actually was working.
We’d more than reached an impasse.
And I’d continue to reach an impasse in many conversations for the foreseeable future.
"The US Election Was Stolen"
After courts, audits, and recounts found no widespread fraud, the narrative among many Trump supporters didn't collapse—it evolved.
The absence of proof became the proof: "They're covering it up."
Every investigation that concluded with “no fraud” was reframed as evidence that the investigators were corrupt, paid off, or threatened.
"Everyone I Disagree With Is a Plant"
Particularly in fringe political spaces, when a leader says something strategic, they're accused of being a secret government agent, corporate shill, etc.
No amount of personal history or evidence matters—suspicion feeds itself.
It's unprovable because any defence is itself suspicious: "Of course they'd say that!"
The Deep State
"The Deep State is controlling everything" is structured so that it can never be fully proven or disproven.
If someone leaves the government and says the Deep State doesn't exist? That's the Deep State, baby.
Uncovering normal human and systematic dysfunction? That's evidence of how sneaky and pervasive the Deep State is.
Climate Change Denial
Denialists often argue that climate science is entirely fake and manufactured by elites.
Even when multiple independent data sets across the world align, it's reframed as a global conspiracy—because how else could everyone be saying the same thing?
"Plandemic" and Anti-Vaccine Conspiracies
The lack of credible evidence that COVID-19 was intentionally released as a bioweapon (or that vaccines are population control) only bolsters the belief for some groups.
"Of course, there's no proof—they made sure of it."
Any credible scientific study is dismissed as part of the coverup.
Listen, I trust politicians about as much as I trust televangelists. I think we built our systems wrong and continue to uphold them because foundational change is an exhausting and daunting endeavour that wouldn’t do much to benefit those who have the power to truly be change-makers. What I don’t believe is that everything is an elaborate coverup, impossible to prove. I don’t believe that data, reliably sourced, with clarity and context, lies to us.
For investigators, the trouble with the unprovable isn’t just that it resists evidence, it’s that it erodes the very idea that the evidence matters at all.
Once belief becomes immune to proof, OSINT becomes ammunition for whichever narrative cares to grab it. The job is often larger than data gathering itself, it’s social, it’s psychological, it’s to understand the structure of belief. You can’t debunk a cult with a PDF. But you can map the architecture of its appeal, reveal who benefits, how it spreads, what language primes belief, and which platforms quietly profit.
You can't out-fact faith. But you can name it, chart it, and make sure the Permanent Record shows who was selling belief when the truth got inconvenient.